Hidden Insight: Admitting to Vicarious existence = permission to see emotions and feelings 206

My goal right now is to describe in as much detail as possible the process involved as it occurred in real time, behind a certain significant realization.

So my backstory. So I have had for a long time been semi-aware, well... fully aware there is a problem, and semi-aware of what was occurring in the background. So what I was aware of was that I had a certain problem in relation to how I played video games. What I wasn't aware of, is what I will be explaining in this blog, and how I came to that.

So today, I had pictures, imaginations of playing a certain game. I did ignore it a couple times, where by ignore I mean, simply breathe and continue on with my schedule. Later on in the day, I found some information about this game by accident, and I automatically went to check it out. I did feel excited and emotional, wanting to play it. I decided to write things out. So I wrote what I could about how I felt, which included feeling enthusiastic, excited and happy, and even how I felt angry and vengeful as another layer that activates if I don't play this game. So I wrote about it what I could, and I wrote the commonsense perspective about the situation, how the game isn't this whole world, yet I treat it as such value. So at that point I hadn't known yet what would open up later on.

So I was looking at it, and looking at what I wrote previously. I decided to play, to see. It was like a semi-aware decision, because I was aware that putting myself in the situation that would lead to emotions, would help me to write about them. So I just played. I played for about 2 hours. The time wasn't significant however, because the reason I stopped playing was because an event occurred where one of my characters had died. I felt emotional in that moment, and quit the game, letting my other characters to die as well. So I was emotional. And this is what I investigated next.

So I opened up a fresh document and I wrote about why I became emotional. I described everything I could, and as I was writing it out, there was like these semi-aware truths, where I knew something was true. When I wrote it out, it became obvious. I was living vicariously. This word is specific because I wrote about this pattern in one of my blogs over a year ago. So I had originally wrote how we live vicariously through our thoughts. But was I saw in relation to this moment was that I was living vicariously through my characters in the game through my emotions. This is what I exactly wrote: 

Im not sure what I am feeling. Is it sadness? Sadness when I lost one of my characters in the game, especially because I didn’t know what I was doing? I felt upset and I just wanted to give up, and I did. I wasn’t playing to win. What’s the solution here? The problem doesn’t seem to be that I wasn’t playing to win. The problem seems to be how I react when I lost the character in the game. I was emotionally invested in the character. So one reason why I play games is to have an emotional investment in a character, where in the game I will feel feelings and emotions regarding the character and the situation they are in.  I see this clearly, in memories where the character is simply living, surviving well, and that moment of peace and tranquility where you enjoy the simple things.  This isn’t something I do in my daily life, yet I try to live that through the games.

So I see one pattern of living vicariously, which means through someone or something else, where I have emotions and feelings through imagining and picture how someone else is feeling. This happens in books, tv shows, movies, games, and even in day to day living where we imagine other people and how they feel, their stories and life experiences. I notice in me that I seek those emotions and feelings, those experiences, which I do have when I participate in these activities. I notice this too in what appears to be the simplest of activities, having a conversation, something which I have highly valued and desired for my life, where I do experience emotions and feelings, and it is based on what another tells me about how they experience certain things. 

One more description of how I approached this, is that when I started out, I had no clue, so I just wrote what I did have, which you can see above. "I am not sure what I am feeling..." 

So this whole thing is actually a point that expands many medium, not just video games. When I watch movies or tv shows, or have conversations with people, the same occurs. Because its all the same point, me placing myself in someone else's perspective, which is my interpretation, and generating emotions and feelings based on that content. Nothing is happening to my physically, but mentally I am creating this whole alternate reality. This explains something that I wasn't fully aware of, which is why I am drawn to conversations, and tv shows, and movies. It does have to do with emotions and feelings, which I was aware of, but I wasn't aware of exactly why or how. I see with the movies, and books I have read, and with friendships and relationships I have had, that I do the same, which the words I would use to describe it is making it personal, and relating to them personally, which the content really is just emotions and feelings. Its strange because I have this resistance to calling my connection with friendships and relationships as based purely on emotions and feelings, because that would be an insult to them. When really this has been done forever, and its no secret this is what people glorify, their emotions and feelings. So within that framework such thinking wouldn't make sense. The only framework where such thinking does make sense is one where I know emotions and feelings are empty, which they are. So its true my relationships and friendships, not just to people but to everything (fictional characters in movies, tv shows, books, and games), that is based within emotions and feelings, are empty, because emotions and feelings are only about how I feel, which is a selfish limited perspective, one that I am not really in control of. I really can't conceive or really know what it would be like to relate to things without emotions and feelings. I am at a point where I simply don't know because it hasn't been explored/known yet by me. I had assumed that I did know or can know, simply through imagining it, but I can't because even the things, those moments that I referenced as moments without emotions and feelings, are actually moments of emotions and feelings. Those were vicarious moments, where I imagined how someone else felt. Imagining is not the same as living it. And imagining is something that is created, and it is not known by me the exact details and inner workings within imaginations. Yet I treated it as real, or like the same as experiencing the actual thing first hand.  

Its time to get real, meaning that when I watch a movie or read a book, what is real is what is physically happening, meaning there is a movement of light that is traveling from a machine or a paper book with printed ink, that enters my eye and I understand or interpret the image or words. And what I experience as emotions and feelings are emotions and feelings, which hold no truth or value, and are simply created within me, and in a way, die within me as well. I also am not aware of exactly how the emotions are created or even the process behind which they die or disappear. That is what is real and what is happening real time in the moment. I for the most part have had these emotions and feelings generated in relation to what I have seen, imagined, and thought. So its time for me to admit I am having emotions and feelings, and recognize them as such, in those moments of conversation, movie watching, tv watching, games, which all functions similarly, involving an access of thought about the characters, what the characters feel or are going through, which perhaps the biggest defense I had was this desire for conversation, and connection between and other people, which those words referenced emotions and feelings, and because those words I used were actually referencing emotions and feeling experiences, that is why it stood, because I didn't believe or see them as referencing emotions and feelings, but the actual thing. Here I have to be honest, that I don't know what an actual connection, or even an actual conversation, one that is not defined or referencing emotions or feelings. So I can't really speak or use these words, like conversation, and connection, to reference the real thing, because I don't know it yet. All I have known is emotions and feelings. And there are many, million moments, where I participated in the exact same wording, of creating a connection or building something, when it was still within emotions and feelings. But I didn't recognize it in the moment for what it was. I did however was semi-aware of the possibility that what I referred to as a connection was actually emotions and feelings. I was aware of the possibility. But I didn't explore it, and investigate it. I am guilty of that. Because I could have investigated and asked myself the question sincerely, is this emotions and feelings? And I recall some times where i did that, actually quite a few times, but I didn't go through with it all the way, to really find out and really be sure. I was defending it, because I wanted to believe that it was a connection, that it was real. So that I would have something, and I would have value. It's time to admit that words like value, the only reference I have to them really, is emotions and feelings. Behind this words and perhaps many more, I reference a memory of a moment of emotions and feelings. So within such words, I literally access emotions and feelings in the moment I use that word, and recall/reference the referent. I know emotions and feelings are without value, so there is a trap or contradiction, where I have had such words whose real meaning are not emotions and feelings, but they reference emotions and feelings, because that is how it has always been throughout my life. I have a vocabulary of words that reference memories and moments of emotions and feelings which define those very words, which I didn't recognize until I fully considered the possibility and LOOKED, and once I looked I saw it, and there was a real time moment where I had the choice of not writing it down in my document. So it was like a split second decision of whether I could write down what I saw, or not. So I obviously did, and the reason could be because of what I have walked thus far, in pushing, moving acting in the moment, and listening and following the advice from the eqafe interviews. So I wrote it out, and once I wrote it out exactly how I saw it, it became obvious. So that was a difference compared to all of the other moments before in my past (I wrote parents by mistake, but this might be a significant misspelling because perhaps yes my parents never went as far as I did today) where I did look and see, but I didn't write it out, and looked deeper and fully.  This is like an admittance. I admit to what I experience to be an emotion and feelings, so I am giving myself admittance to see, which is similar to permission, where I give myself permission to see, and it per my mission to really see things, because seeing and other words and phrases only referenced emotions and feelings, something I wasn't admitting and giving myself permission to see. So I admit, which means also to allow in, so I am seeing these emotions and feelings for how they exist. So in essence I am giving myself permission to see emotions and feelings. Instead of deciding what an emotion or feeling is. Emotions and feelings already exist, I just have to admit it and see.